A wind farm typically consists of a group of interconnected wind turbines disposed at a given farm site. The wind farm may include a group of two wind turbines or a group of hundreds of wind turbines, with the turbines being spread out over a small area (e.g., several hundred square meters) or over an extended area (e.g., hundreds of square kilometers). As is generally understood, the farm site typically corresponds to a location or area that provides the desired amount of wind exposure, which may be an offshore location or an onshore location.
The wind turbines within a wind farm are typically monitored and controlled using a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system that is housed within a control station located at the wind farm site. Specifically, for each wind farm installation, an individual control station is typically built or installed at the site that includes a large amount of computing equipment, networking and communications equipment and other equipment that enables the SCADA system to locally monitor and control the operation of the wind turbines. For example, the turbine controller housed within each wind turbine may be communicatively coupled to various computing devices located within the on-site control station. The control station computing devices may then implement the SCADA system by collecting operating data from the turbine controllers and transmitting control signals to the turbine controllers for controlling the operation of their corresponding wind turbines.
Unfortunately, the cost of installing the on-site control station is typically quite expensive. In addition, such cost is typically the same regardless of whether ten wind turbines or two hundred wind turbines are contained within the wind farm. Accordingly, on-site control stations implementing SCADA systems contribute significantly to the overall expenses related to installing and maintaining a wind farm.
Thus, an improved system and method that allows for multiple wind farms to be effectively and efficiently monitored and controlled from a single, off-site SCADA system would be welcomed in the technology. In doing so, a need also exists for the system and method to be able to accommodate network connectivity issues between the off-site SCADA system and a given wind farm to ensure that the wind farm may continue to be maintained despite a loss of connection with the remote SCADA system.